SLPNarrative ReviewAmerican journal of audiology2022

Lipreading: A Review of Its Continuing Importance for Speech Recognition With an Acquired Hearing Loss and Possibilities for Effective Training.

Lynne E Bernstein, Nicole Jordan, Edward T Auer and 1 others

PMID 35316072

WHAT IT FOUND

Lipreading training works when feedback targets specific consonant errors, not just whole words.

In adults with normal hearing, this method improved sentence recognition in noise by about 10 percentage points. Current evidence supports this approach, but trials in people with acquired hearing loss are still underway.

Key findings

01Training that provides feedback on specific consonant errors led to larger improvements in lipreading than feedback on whole words or sentences.

02Improvements from consonant-level training generalized to untrained sentences in both visual-only and audio-visual conditions.

03Presenting the full printed word before a visual speech stimulus interfered with learning, whereas withholding vowel information helped.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

Read the rest of this summary

You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.

Already have one?

What it does not show

The training experiments described were conducted on adults with normal hearing, not the target population of older adults with acquired hearing loss. The authors have a direct conflict of interest as they are reviewing and promoting their own theoretical framework and training paradigms. The review notes that clinical trials in people with hearing loss are currently ongoing but not yet reported, so the efficacy for the target population is not yet proven.

Declared interests

The review is written by researchers (Bernstein et al.) who developed the training paradigms and theoretical models being discussed and evaluated. They are promoting their own approach to lipreading training.

The easy way to misread this

Do not assume these training results apply to patients with hearing loss yet. The successful experiments were done on adults with normal hearing, and the authors state that trials in people with acquired hearing loss are still ongoing.

Read it on PubMed →